Zealz GK802 quad-core mini PC can run Android, Ubuntu

The Zealz GK802 is a tiny PC with a Freescale i.MX6 quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage. It’s designed so that you can plug the stick-sized computer into your TV to surf the web, stream video, and run apps on a big screen.

Out of the box the $100 mini computer runs Google Android 4.0. But it appears the device will also be able to run Ubuntu Linux.

At this point the software is still in beta, and it’s not yet available to the public. But it’s not surprising that the GK802 can run operating systems beside Android.

Freescale offers quite a bit of documentation for the i.MX6 line of chips, which makes porting software and operating systems to run on devices with this chipset much simpler than doing the same for devices with some other ARM-based processors.

The Zealz GK802 features Vivante GC2000 quad-core graphics, built-in support for Bluetooth and WiFi, HDMI, USB, and micro USB ports, and a microSD card slot.

We’ve seen Ubuntu and other Linux-based operating systems ported to similar mini-PCs in the past, including models with Allwinner A10 and Rockchip RK3066 processors. But Freescale offers significantly more support for this sort of thing than most other chip-makers, and this is one of the first projects I’ve heard of where the manufacturer of an Android stick is working to enable support for a desktop Linux operating system.

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This will make a lot of people happy. If I remember correctly, a number of commenters on this site have been clamoring for exactly this hardware configuration.

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This site and elsewhere.
It’s really cool to see a company trying to respond, and I’ll bet they profit from it too.

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This is extremely good news, this will be the first stick-PC to officially support Ubuntu.

It is only logical to support Ubuntu if the stick is based on i.MX6 since Freescale itself officially supports Ubuntu on its SOCs so it should only be minimal work to adapt it to a board using the i.MX6.

I hope they port the hw accelerated GStreamer plugins as well, so watching HD video will work both in Ubuntu and Android.

Also, a quad-core stick craves to run a serious operating system, since very few Android apps could actually use all four cores.

Actually, this stick would be a great base for the “Ubuntu for Android” product of Canonical which runs Ubuntu and Android in parallel.

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Does this include full OpenGL ES 2.0 support in the Ubuntu environment, i.e. full Xorg support? That seems to be missing in virtually all of these “it runs * Linux” announcements.

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What are the chances of this thing running Myth Frontend nicely? If it does, I’m 100% in. Probably will be in anyway.

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